The movie Martin Scorsese called “genuinely transcendental”
There are a great number of movies from the American filmmaking maestro Martin Scorsese that we might describe as “genuinely transcendental,” from his 20th-century classics Taxi Driver and Goodfellas to his contemporary gems, The Departed and The Irishman. But what about the opinion of the director? What film has led him to rethink how movies are made, understood and analysed?
Indeed, as well as an iconic filmmaker, Scorsese is also a purveyor of the silver screen, gaining much of his knowledge from some of the greatest directors ever to work in the industry. From American filmmakers like John Ford and Sam Peckinpah to foreign masters like Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa, Scorsese has long been a promoter of diverse creativity, using his platform to elevate less-known innovators.
Such becomes clear when you look back to the filmmaker’s favourite movies of the 1990s, sitting down with the revolutionary film critic Roger Ebert at the end of the decade to go through his choices.
Whilst he is fond of familiar western flicks like Michael Mann’s Heat, Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, calling the latter “a profound film about love, sex, and trust in a marriage”, Scorsese also brings several foreign films to the attention of American audiences with his list. Celebrating such classics as Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and Wu Nien-jen’s A Borrowed Life, there is one Chinese movie he holds in higher regard than all others of the decade.
Directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, The Horse Thief tells the story of a Tibetan man struggling to provide for his family and stars a number of native actors, such as Rigzin Tseshang, Jiji Dan, Daiba and Drashi. “The story of the film is as simple and elemental as the lives of the people it depicts,” Scorsese says of the movie he puts at the very top of his list of the best movies of the 1990s.
Continuing his description of the movie, he adds, “A man is ostracised from his tribe for stealing horses. His living conditions become so severe that his son dies. He repents and is accepted back into the fold. He’s forced to steal horses again to keep his second child alive”.
When it comes to what magnetised Scorsese to the lesser-known foreign film, the filmmaker explains, “I have a great interest in anthropology, and Tian takes you inside a culture that initially felt as distant to me as the surface of the moon, and because he stays so simple and specific, the point of view becomes universal. This is what life is all about: struggling to keep your family alive”.
There might have been countless classics released in the 1990s, but for Scorsese, nothing gets better than The Horse Thief, “This is what life is all about: struggling to keep your family alive. Horse Thief was a real inspiration to me. It’s that rare thing of a genuinely transcendental film”.
